Blood Ties: A Novel

by Jo Nesbo Narrated by Euan Morton

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

After the events of The Kingdom, Carl and Roy are content living their small-town lives — but old habits die hard. Tense and chilling, Blood Ties is impossible to put down.

From the modern master of Nordic suspense comes an explosive novel about a community in crisis and two brothers on the verge of losing everything they've worked so hard to achieve.


By all accounts, Carl and Roy Opgard are doing quite well for themselves. Or at least they're doing as well as can be expected in a small town like Os. Carl manages the area's swanky and successful spa and hotel, while Roy runs a nearby gas station and harbors grand plans to build it out into an entire amusement park, complete with a roller coaster. But when news breaks about a new highway to be built nearby, bypassing Os and leaving the town cutoff and isolated, it's clear that something has to be done . . . even if the methods are bound to be dirty. Fortunately, Carl and Roy have experience with just that kind of work.

Meanwhile, the town sheriff has gotten his hands on new technology that will enable him to take a deeper look at a slate of unsolved murders from years past-including that of his own father. And just as the sheriff reopens his investigation, the death toll begins to climb. It's like Roy says about his roller coaster: “Once it's rolling, it's too late to get off.”

Blood Ties is a tense, compulsively readable tour de force about loyalty, family ties, and love that is as destructive as it is powerful.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

*One of USA Today's "Books We Think You Should Read Next"*

“Nesbø has established himself as the king of Nordic noir.”
—NPR’s All Things Considered

“Jo Nesbø—aided immensely by Robert Ferguson’s penetrating translation—moves inexorably towards a finale that evokes classic tragedy.”
—The Anniston Star

“It’s so nice to see the classic crime noir framework applied to a Norwegian landscape, which makes the proceedings all the more foreign and chillier. There is nothing that Jo Nesbø cannot do.”
—Bookreporter.com

“Nesbø brilliantly plunges readers into the psyche of a charming killer, leavening the bloodshed with pop culture references and dashes of the lacerating humor that suffuses his Harry Hole series. The result is a chilling and darkly funny noir that will haunt readers long after the last page.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Beautifully written literary suspense. . . . Readers will feel this one long after the final words.”
—Booklist (starred review)

“Nesbø’s latest boasts a quirky comic edge. . . . A darkly entertaining thriller.”
—Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

2024-11-09
The prolific murdering brothers Roy and Carl Opgard—introduced inThe Kingdom (2020)—return for more bloody havoc in the Norwegian village of Os.

When they were in their late teens, Roy and Carl, in retaliation for their father’s longtime abuse of Carl and their mother’s failure to do anything about it, sent the old man’s Cadillac DeVille crashing into a ravine with both parents inside. When Roy, the supposedly protective older brother, was 35, he attempted to kill Carl for abusing his (Carl’s) wife, Shannon—who was carrying Roy’s baby. "I was a mass murderer who was absolutely ready to start a family," Roy says ruefully. Carl ends that hope by bashing Shannon’s skull in, but the siblings quickly return to their default state, scheming together to save the hotel Carl runs and get financing for Roy to build an amusement park with the world’s biggest rollercoaster. Potential investors resist Roy and Carl at their peril. Among them: the abusive father of Natalie, a drug-addicted singer Roy knows from childhood who now toys with his affections. Leave it to the crafty Nesbø, in deadpan mode, to treat Roy like any guy with problems—a "scrupulous" killer with a good heart and great taste in music (the late Eric Clapton crony J.J. Cale dominates the soundtrack). A populous novel that sometimes comes off like a twisted version ofOur Town, Nesbø’s latest boasts a quirky comic edge. The book doesn’t build to the kind of tense conclusion the Harry Hole creator is known for, but it’s not that kind of story. At the start, Roy wonders, "Can anyone be a killer?" It takes a different type of murderer to ask that.

A darkly entertaining thriller.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192236499
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/11/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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